পাতা:বঙ্কিম রচনাবলী (দ্বিতীয় খণ্ড).pdf/৭৪৩

এই পাতাটির মুদ্রণ সংশোধন করা প্রয়োজন।

শ্ৰীমন্তব্গবদ্গীতা a 3G 'Fallacies of Memory', \sqrt is(tris l) ruble action. কিরাপে এরপ সমতির উদয় হয়, তাহা কাপেণ্টর সাহেবের Mental Physiology নামক গ্রন্থ হইতে দাইটি উদাহরণ উদ্ধত করিয়া বঝাইব । Several years ago the Rev. S. Hansard, now Rector of Bethnal Green, was doing clerical duty for a time at Hulstmonceaux in Sussex and while the re, he one day went Over with a party of friends oi Pevensey Castle, which he did not remember to have previously visited. As he approached the gateway he became conscious of a very vivid impression of having seen it before and he 'seemed to himself to see' not only the gateway itself but donkeys beneath the arch and people on the top of it. His conviction that he must have visited the castle on some former occasion-although he had neither the slightest remembrance of such a visit, nor any knowledge of having ever been in the neighbourhood previously to his residence at Hurstmonceoux-made him enquire from his mother if she could throw any light on the matter. She at once informed him that being in that part of the country when he was about eighteen months old, she has gone over with a large party and had taken hinn in the pannier of a donkey, that the elders of the party having brought lunch with them, had eaten it on the roof of the gateway, where they would have been seen from below, whilst he had been left with the attendants and donkeys.- This case is remarkable for the vividness of the sensorial impression (it may be worth mentioning that Mr. Hansald has a decidedly artistic temperament) and for the reproduction of details which were not likely to have been brought up in conversation, even if he had happened to hear the visit itself mentioned as an event of his childhood, and of such mention he has no remembrance whatever.' যদি এই ব্যক্তির মা না বাঁচিয়া থাকিতেন, তাহা হইলে এ সমিতি কোথা হইতে আসিল, তাহার কিছই নিশ্চয়তা হইত না। পািব্বজন্মবাদিগণ ইহা পািব্বজন্মস্পমতি বলিয়া ধরিতেন সন্দেহ নাই। এইবােপ অনেক সমিতি আছে, যাহার। আমরা কোন কারণ দেখি না, অন্যাসন্ধান করিলে ইহজন্মেই তাহার কারণ পাওয়া যায়। এইরাপ সফল অন্যসন্ধানের আর একটি উদাহরণ কাপেণ্টর সাহেবের ঐ গ্রন্থ হইতে উদ্ধত করিতেছি। In a Roman Catholic town in Germany a young woman who could neither read nor write, was seized with a fever and was said by the priests to be possessed of the devil, because she was heard talking Latin, Greck and Hebrew. Whole sheets of her ravings were written out and found to consist of sentences intelligible in themselves, but having slight connection with each other. Of her Hebrew sayings only a few could be traced to the Bible and most seemed to be in Rabbinical dialect. All trick was out of the question; the woman was a simple creature; there was no doubt as to the fever. It was long before any cxplanation, save that of demoniacal possession, could be obtained. At last the mystery was unveiled by a physician who determined to trace back the girl's history and who after much trouble discovered that at the age of nine she had been charitably taken by an old Protestant pastor, a great Hebrew scholar, in whose house she lived till his death. On further inquiry it appeared to have been the old man's custom for years to walk up and down a passage in his house GOa.